Monday, January 07, 2013

The Security State Ramps Up

Newly extracted FBI documents show that, under Barack Obama, it's business even worse than usual for the American security state. Chris Hedges, writing for TruthDig.com, warns that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have been unleashed on ordinary Americans, "to silence the voices and obstruct the activity of citizens who question corporate power."

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the [Partnership for Civil Justice Fund], said in a
written statement about the released files: “This production [of
information], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a
window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring,
and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy
movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and
banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist
activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning
as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this
surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning
by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies
corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within
constitutional rights, is a suspect. These documents are part of the
plan to make us fearful, compliant and disempowered. They mark, I
suspect, a government attempt to end peaceful mass protests by
responding with repression to the grievances of Americans.

And what of our country? What of Harper's unaccountable secret police? We know that he's created a task force of officers from the RCMP plus the Calgary and Edmonton police forces together with our national spy agency, CSIS, to monitor opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline. What are they up to? Who are they watching?
This blog has attracted periodic attention from US Navy intelligence, US Army intelligence, the FBI, Homeland Security, Lockheed Martin. Who else is watching, and for what? Maybe that's all part of the game. Hit the site and hope they'll notice you stopped by just to let them know you're keeping an eye on them.

It is truly difficult to see how the right to privacy can ever be restored today. So much personal information is so readily available to strangers and flies through so many hands (or computers) at the speed of electrons. Perhaps we should stop fighting a lost battle and focus our energies, instead, on those who most abuse our privacy. You know who they are. Chances are you even voted for one of them.

@ Anon. You're right, the last lines were a bit ambiguous. What I'm getting at is that the way to restore at least some measure of our privacy is to go at those behind the organizations and institutions that so freely plunder ours. Anonymous has been doing just that recently, hacking into their e-mails, their records, their data and then releasing it.